NU-TEACH Grad Ron Hale Wins Golden Apple Award

NU-TEACH Grad Ron Hale Wins Golden Apple Award

Ron Hale, a 2009 graduate of the NU-TEACH alternative certification program, won the Golden Apple Award for Teaching Excellence. Along with the other nine Golden Apple Award winners, he will be honored at a banquet hosted by the Golden Apple Foundation and WTTW on October 21. Each year after an extensive selection process, the Golden Apple Foundation chooses 10 people to honor as outstanding teachers. Hale was one of 10 teachers selected out of the 600 nominated in the Chicago area.

Hale, who was raised on Chicago’s South Side and now teaches there, teaches science to seventh and eighth graders at Chicago International Charter School–Avalon, a public charter school. NU-TEACH coordinator Michelle Jenkins was impressed by Hale’s use of technology and discovery in his teaching. “He is amazing to watch in the classroom,” she says.

“As a beginning teacher, he was always welcoming and well prepared in the classroom. His lessons were consistently student-centered and based on the inquiry model,” she adds. “He developed a wonderful rapport with his students, one of mutual respect and admiration. He also was very professional and collegial with all those he worked with. Clearly, a teacher who devotes his all to his students, always putting them first,”

“I eat, sleep and breathe teaching,” Hale told WLS-TV on the day he won the award.

All of the Golden Apple winners receive $3,000 and participate in a tuition-free sabbatical at Northwestern University. At the University, the award winners participate in a seminar directed by SESP teaching associate Penny Lundquist.